


in umbra

by Anonymous



Category: Ancient Roman Religion & Lore, Spartacus (1960)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Love Confessions, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Role Reversal, Self-Destructive Tendencies, War Crimes, no yikes to be found here, sulla formerly known as victorian street urchin child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29672490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's pillowtalk and Sulla is high and playing nice, what more could you ask for?
Relationships: Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix/Marcus Licinius Crassus
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous





	in umbra

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago and decided to edit it and touch it up and now here it is. Please heed the tags, also

It feels strange to think that he is somehow special to be in the presence of a half-inebriated Sulla, who still lies still on Crassus’s bed. It isn’t a special thing to see Sulla deep in the haze of sweet, dry wine and thin opium smoke. But the revelry has left him, the boisterousness of the entertainer long retired for the night as each of the guests had left, leaving what? A man not quite in control of himself, but not so unrestrained that his mind was a tangled vine of ivy. Though, nothing about him is uncouth, even in the presence of Crassus.

Crassus watches him as best he can in the darkness of night. Sulla lays, one leg propped up and bent at the knee, the other leg sprawled out. His chest is still rising and falling noticeably as he catches his breath. He can’t see his eyes, but he knows they’re stormy; that bright, vibrant blue dulled somewhat after he butchered that cerulean city and let the sea off of Piraeus be dyed with the blood of its countrymen. Crassus takes an idle sip from his cup of heavily diluted wine. The sweat on his bare skin is cooling quickly. He sets the cup down, only half empty, and quietly walks to the bed, stiff in a way that was not conducive with their earlier activities. Though, usually, Sulla would be gone by now, the large wooden courtyard door opening and closing before Crassus had even gone fully soft again. He allows himself to be a little trepidatious. 

The bed sheets are warm as he sits on the side of the bed, drawing his legs up and under the covers as he turns. Before he can slide down beneath the covers, his straining gaze meets Sulla’s, who looks up at him, thinking thoughts that Crassus can’t even begin to guess. Skittishly, he looks away and lays down. He jumps as he feels Sulla’s arm beneath him, but Sulla doesn’t move it, and Crassus cannot decide if it would be worse to get up again, or just lay on it, so he lays. Before he can begin to sweat out his panic, rough fingers close over his shoulder, and the arm beneath his back tenses up against him. Crassus turns towards Sulla, shifting awkwardly in the creaking bed until he’s entirely turned in against Sulla’s chest, Sulla’s arm resting on the uneven line of his shoulders. 

His hand moves to the nape of Crassus’s neck, his fingers gently following the whorl of brunette hair at his hairline again and again.

Crassus’s lips purse, and he tries to crane his head upward to look at Sulla, but the angle and the darkness only give him shadows so his eyes settle across the room at the outline of the cracked fresco on the wall. “I,” he starts, cutting himself off as his own voice takes him by surprise in the midst of their characteristic silence. “I didn’t...hurt you tonight, did I?” 

“No, I liked it.” Sulla yawns. “I don’t ever want to do it again.”

Crassus considers him, and wishes he had a thousand years to think about those few words alone. The proposition had been a strange one, a man like him asking to play the catamite. He remembered the sight of him, face painted red in honor of Mars, riding through the streets on a chariot with that slave standing behind him, holding the crown above his golden head, lips moving with an inaudible mantra of Sulla’s mortality and his worthlessness in the face of the gods. Before he can say anything, Sulla continues, his voice slurred with fatigue and his drunkenness. 

“When I was a youth, I did such things. My enjoyment of it is forever at war with sour memories from my adolescence.”

“I understand,” says Crassus. It is more insight than Sulla had ever bothered to grant him, and yet it is overwhelming in its truthfulness. Too much for Crassus to consider, too much to digest. It sits in his gut heavily. It is impossible to imagine Sulla as anything less than the titan he is now, and yet his reality was once far from that of a triumphant imperator. Once, a poor, dirt-smeared scrap on the streets, running with actors and children of families of ill-repute, selling himself for coin when the price of grain was greater than his mother’s wages at the gristmill. This man, who rides into battle with ruthlessness and courage, who strides into senatorial estates with venomous cunning, somehow still bears scars from a childhood that rendered him vulnerable and naïve. 

“No,” Sulla sighs tiredly. “You don’t.” He turns over away from Crassus, though he doesn’t drift further from him. If Crassus moves closer to swallow up any gaps between them, he doesn’t notice it. Slowly, he drapes his arm on Sulla’s waist, and the latter allows it. “That’s alright. I wouldn’t wish for you to understand.” His voice is heavy and breathy, laden with his drowsiness, the opium finally beginning to overcome him. He gives another great sigh, and like Eurydice, becomes indistinguishable from shadow. “I’ve always loved you, Marcus.” 


End file.
